On May 20th, East Timor will celebrate its full independence and become the world's newest democracy when the United Nations turns over the reins of the country to the recently established government. Since passage of the UN-sponsored referendum for independence in 1999, East Timor has been in the process of rebuilding following 25 years of Indonesian military occupation and steadily progressing toward self-government. What will this new era bring? For almost a quarter century, Jos? Ramos Horta has been one of the central figures in East Timor's struggle for independence. Exiled from his country for 24 years, Dr. Ramos Horta was the international spokesman for human rights and the self-determination of his homeland. In 1996 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with Bishop Carlos Belo, the religious leader of East Timor, "to honor their sustained and self-sacrificing contributions for a small but oppressed people." He returned to East Timor in 1999 to help rebuild a new, liberated homeland following years of devastating turmoil. Today he serves as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the interim United Nations Administration, and continues in his role as the international voice of East Timor.

Professor Campbell will discuss Japan's new public, mandatory, long-term care insurance program: does it make sense as social policy? As economic policy? Professor Creighton has long been interested in the relationship between politics and substantive public policy, and in the way policies change upon implementation. He has pursued this interest mostly in the context of the Japanese political system, and in this talk he will apply his framework to Japan's foray into socialized care for the elderly.

Indonesia has seen no respite from its turbulent politics, faltering economy, and simmering conflicts since mass pressure forced President Soeharto from office in 1998 after decades of authoritarian rule. The International Crisis Group (ICG) has focused its Indonesian research on separatist conflicts in Aceh and Papua, communal violence in Maluku and Kalimantan, and the ongoing economic crisis, and has recommended specific military and judicial reforms. In Burma, which has known near-constant conflict since its independence in 1948, the Group has focused on ethnic antagonisms, regime policies, and needed reforms. ICG has also assessed the efficacy of foreign sanctions and engagements as alternative ways of inducing change, and suggested how the international community might help lower the potential for violent strife in a future political transition. Gareth Evans, during his long tenure as Australia's foreign minister (1988-1996), played key roles in bringing peace to Cambodia, founding the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and promoting forms of regionalism reflecting his country's proximity to Asia. For his Cambodian work he was awarded the ANZAC Peace Prize in 1994. Writing of Evans' record as foreign minister, ex-Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten has observed: "High intelligence and principle added to a razor-sharp wit ensured that he was a controversial figure, but one who left the world better than he found it." Foreign affairs, human rights, and legal reform are among the topics explored by Evans in his many publications. Most recently he co-chaired the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. A long-time former member of Australia's parliament (1978-1999), Evans holds degrees in law from Melbourne University and in politics, economics, and philosophy from Oxford University.

American news from Indonesia has been alarming. "Asian Terror: Al Qaeda Seeks Niche in Indonesia, Officials Fear," headlined the New York Times on 23 January 2002. In the same issue, in a column ambitiously subtitled "What the Muslim World Really Feels," Tom Friedman described "an iron curtain of misunderstanding separating America and the Arab-Muslim world"--a world marked, in his view, by "enormous cultural resistance to believing anything good about America."

Indonesia is mainly Malay, not Arab, but it has more Muslims than any other country. How seriously should signs of jihadism there be taken? Ostensibly Islamist or jihadist movements include Darul Islam, HAMMAS, Laskar Jihad, the Islamic Defenders Front, the Islamic Youth Movement, Jemaah Islamiah, and KISDI. In Maluku and Sulawesi, Christians have killed Muslims and vice versa. Americans and their embassy in Jakarta have been threatened. How should such groups, events, and risks be described, explained, and responded to? In what specific ways are faith, politics, and violence intersecting in Indonesia--and with what implications for Indonesians and Americans?

Analysts have long portrayed Indonesian Muslims as exemplary in their openness and tolerance toward non-Muslims and, within the Muslim community, toward religious diversity, creativity, and reform. Were these observers naive? Or have jihadism and Islamism been grossly overdrawn, and for reasons that involve politics, prejudice, and sensationalism far more than actual conditions? In this volatile context, how realistic are current reformist projects to foster a "liberal Islam," a "moderate Islam," a "feminist Islam," or a distinctively accommodative "Indonesian Islam"--as against an avowedly "militant Islam" that would impose an "Islamic state"?

How was it that Afghanistan, a country that was often conquered and ruled by outsiders before 1800, became seemingly impossible to conquer and rule in the 19th and 20th centuries? An historical examination of Afghan history reveals that premodern Central Asian rulers looked upon war and conquest as the business of displacing rival elites, a process having little or nothing to do with the inhabitants of the territory. During the 19th century, this pattern began to change in Afghanistan where governments found themselves dependent on raising tribal armies to repel foreign invaders, such as the British, at the cost of sharing power with them in the postwar period. This pattern continued into the 20th century when during each period of state collapse drew an ever-wider part of the population into the political struggle for power. The Soviet invasion drew the widest possible opposition but upon their withdrawal no faction was able to create a stable government. Afghanistan fell into ten years of civil war that opened it up to extreme movements such the Taliban and its exploitation by outsiders such as Osama bin Laden. Since war alone has now proved incapable of solving Afghanistan's problems the current conflict in Afghanistan can only be won by a wider policy that makes Afghanistan's economic and political reconstruction a priority in a way that can end its cycle of anarchy.

The recent decades have witnessed the rise of new scholarship in Korea, which tries to "rewrite" the modern Korean history between the late 1940s and the early 1950s. It seeks to challenge and overcome the so-called "revisionist" approaches to the modern Korean history, but it is definitely far from endorsing or returning to the previous "traditional" viewpoints. Claiming itself to be a "third wave" in the study of modern Korean history, this presentation re-examines the postwar U.S.-Korean policy in general, discusses the American governing of South Korea from practical points of view, and puts forth the social history of the modern Korea under the U.S. occupation and during the Korean war.

Professor Wang Jisi is director and a senior researcher of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. He is concurrently director of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at the Party School of the Central Committee, the Communist Party of China, a guest professor of Peking University and Tsinghua University, and president of the Chinese Association for American Studies. He is also a member and advisor to many prestigious research institutions in the United States. He is now teaching a course on "China Under Reform" for the fall semester, 2001, as a Freeman Professor of Asian Studies at Claremont McKenna College in California. Wang Jisi's formal education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. In the ten years between 1968 and 1978 he did various sorts of labor as a herdsman, peasant, and factory worker in Inner Mongolia and central China. He entered Peking University in 1978 and obtained his MA degree in 1983. Professor Wang's scholarly interests cover international relations theory, U.S. foreign policy, Chinese foreign policy, and China-U.S. relations. He has published numerous works in these fields, including a recent volume in Chinese entitled "Lonely at the Top: U.S. Global Strategy and Position in the Post-Cold War World." His articles in English include "Building a Constructive Relationship between the United States, China, and Japan" (1998), "China's New Identity and Peace in Northeast Asia" (2000), "The Internet in China: A New Fantasy?" (2000), and "Hot Peace - Not a New Cold War - between China and the United States" (2001).